


Birds Are Meant To Fly

by LostUnderTheSurface



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, Murder-Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostUnderTheSurface/pseuds/LostUnderTheSurface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet, for all her intelligence, didn't seem to notice Tim's obsession with Batman and Robin. It was Jack who noted how often Tim slipped out at night to stalk the objects of his admiration, Jack who casually mentioned the subject at dinner to watch Tim's expression shift from politely blank to captivated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds Are Meant To Fly

He's known since the first day, when Tim saw the Graysons fall to their death. Janet was too intent on watching the blood pool around the broken bodies, too intent on making sure that little Dick Grayson went to the proper authorities. But Jack knew it, the moment Tim's eyes fixed on the Batman with that gaze so like his mother's. So intent. So observant. So awe-inspired.

He kept an eye on his little boy after that. When they sent the photo to a grief-stricken Dick, when Tim's face lit up every time a report about Batman, and later Robin, came on TV, when the tiny child cut out pictures from the newspaper with Janet's precision and pasted them in a scrapbook.

And then one night he opened his son's bedroom door to discover that the youngster had slipped out. His camera, the one Janet had given him after a trip to Paris, was missing from its usual perch atop the nightstand, and Jack knew where his son had gone.

He never liked to leave Tim, but business called, and DI needed funding, and the digs were both lucrative and intriguing, and Janet convinced him with that gleam in her eye and a smile on her perfectly-painted lips. He wondered if she knew, if she saw the signs in their little boy, if she ever dared to peep inside the box where Tim kept his carefully-developed photographs. Jack didn't; he looked on them in the dark room when they were newly-finished and Tim slipped out to answer his mother's call.

Janet was the demanding one, the rigid one, with her rules and her etiquette and her grand plans for Tim's ascension to the throne of Drake. Tim was a good boy, an obedient boy, and he bent to her wishes like a programmed automaton instead of a human being. But while Tim had his mother's intelligence and discipline, he had his father's temperament. He preferred debate to action, acquiescence to refusal, freedom to choose as he saw fit rather than what another wanted. They had both been well-trained by Janet, of course, and followed her wishes without complaint. But at heart, they were observers, not meddlers.

Janet, for all her intelligence, didn't seem to notice Tim's obsession with Batman and Robin. It was Jack who noted how often Tim slipped out at night to stalk the objects of his admiration, Jack who casually mentioned the subject at dinner to watch Tim's expression shift from politely blank to captivated.

He followed Tim's obsession throughout the boy's preteen years, as he became older and more daring in his nighttime escapades. The quality and quantity of the pictures increased, filling whole scrapbooks that Tim hid in a loose floorboard under his bed, and that Christmas Jack bought him a new camera, a better camera. Tim flushed and thanked his father graciously, and that night Jack lay awake, listening for the soft scuffling of a window opening and closing against the bitter Gotham cold. He hoped the woolen scarf and hat he had talked Janet into buying for the boy would be appreciated as much as the camera had been.

During the months when they were away, and Tim was alone with the housekeeper, Jack kept an eye on the Gotham news, searching for articles about the Dynamic Duo and their escapades. He felt, in some abstract sense, that he and Tim had a special connection in this area, something for just the two of them. And when they returned home one summer to discover Tim bright and bursting full of some new secret, he knew his little boy had unearthed the identities of Batman and Robin. Jack never pried to find out for himself; he preferred the mystery. But if it made Tim glow like that, smile like that, breathlessly chatter about everything but that, he was content.

He and Janet were in Germany when they read about the death of Jason Todd-Wayne, adopted son of Bruce Wayne, in a warehouse fire in Sarajevo. Janet expressed bland surprise that Jason had managed to live that long without killing himself. Jack felt nothing, until he returned to Gotham and saw the downcast expression on Tim's face, the hollowness in his pale eyes. And he knew.

He said nothing to Janet. His wife, lovely and cultured and so very clever, had no use for vigilantes such as Batman. She would care nothing for Tim's hobby, except to tell him his time would be better spent studying and working on his programming. So Jack kept quiet. It was, in his opinion, not really Janet's place to tell Tim what he could and could not be interested in.

They left again a few months later, and Tim waved them goodbye with a firmness to his scrawny shoulders and a twisted smile curling his lips. Jack wanted to take the boy with them this time, but school was starting soon; it wouldn't do for Tim to miss out on his important education, Janet reasoned. Jack felt certain that Tim intended to do some things very much unrelated to school while they were gone, but he said nothing, just patted his son's shoulder and told him to be good. Tim's smile quirked up more at that, and his quiet, “I will, Dad,” made Jack's heart swell.

Later, on the plane, he wasn't sure if it was from fear or pride.

The trip to Haiti turned into a complete disaster, what with Obeah Man kidnapping them and Janet getting poisoned. Batman arrived to rescue them, and Jack expressed the expected surprise, but inside, he felt only a deep satisfaction in knowing that Tim had revealed his secret to the figure he admired so greatly.

Janet's death, and his own coma, put a block on observing Tim's rise as the new Boy Wonder. He often wondered, while recuperating at the hospital, what Wayne's reaction had been to having his identity discovered by a thirteen-year-old. Jack held no ill-will toward the man; behind the playboy persona and the silly celebrity stunts, Wayne had a good heart and equally good intentions.

Of course, Jack reminded himself wryly, they pave the road to Hell with _those._

When he was released back to his own house, that lonely mansion on the hill, oh-so-empty without Janet's commanding presence, he had the opportunity to observe his son with Wayne. It was obvious Tim adored Bruce, almost followed him around like a well-trained pup, and was, in turn, treated like a much-favored nephew. Jack felt satisfied that his boy was in good hands, even if they were the ethically-dubious hands of Batman. It wasn't as if he and Janet had been pillars of righteousness themselves.

He couldn't do much, with his weakened body and the wheelchair, but he enjoyed spending more time with Tim, getting to know him better. He found his son slightly stand-offish toward him, a little too protective of his own privacy, and far too hesitant to pry into Jack's thoughts. Jack let him be; he guessed that keeping a secret as big as _Robin_ from one's own father had enough pressure on it, without Jack putting undue emphasis on knowing where his son spent his nights and why he had so many injuries.

It was a strange thing to do, watching one's son grow up through newspapers and reports, watching his interactions with his new friends and his pseudo-brother, watching him mature and expand his horizons and invent new, creative lies to cover up his activities. Jack accepted them all with perfect trust; he knew fairly well what Tim was actually doing, and it didn't bother him that his son was out there risking his life. He only wished Janet could have been there to see it, too.

When No Man's Land came, and Jack evacuated them out of the city, he felt a burst of fatherly pride that Tim disobeyed orders and sneaked back in to aid his mentor. Certainly, Jack didn't want his son in danger; but Tim was so brave, so willing, so self-sacrificing. How could anyone say no to a boy who only wanted to help?

They moved to an apartment after Gotham was rebuilt. The inner-city location made it difficult for Tim to slip out and meet Batman for nightly patrols, but Jack made sure he was never in the way of his boy's “bedtime”. He liked to wait up until Tim came back, listening for the near-silent footfalls that signaled another safe return. He never went fully to sleep until he was assured that his boy would live to see another sunrise.

Over time, he became accustomed to expecting Tim's slight tread creaking down the hall at four am. It was only one morning, when he failed to detect any noise at all, that he realized something was wrong. He went immediately to his son's room and left a moment later, dismayed to find it empty. Tim never stayed out this late without some well-crafted excuse about friends or school activities. Despite the early hour, he called Wayne Manor, asking if they had seen his boy.

It would have been a dead giveaway that he knew the secret, if Tim hadn't made a habit of spending the night there on the weekends. Jack suspected they were working on cases or ninja arts or whatever Wayne did in his hidey-hole. The butler, Alfred, confirmed that “Master Timothy” was indeed on the premises, and apologized for any worry he might have caused his father. The boy had simply lost track of time while visiting with Master Richard, and they would return him soon.

Dick was the one who dropped Tim off, and Jack was waiting for them at the door. He noticed then, with something of a shock, how relaxed Tim looked with the older boy, how he seemed to withdraw and cocoon himself the moment he saw Jack. It was a strange sensation, to see his son transform from a boy into a corpse in front of him.

And he wondered, not for the first time, how much strain Tim was under from the weight of his secrets.

And that's when he realized, just as he had that night at the circus, that Tim would never be satisfied with a life as Jack Drake's heir. His boy was too smart, too strong, too clever for the mundane world of business politics. He needed more, strove for more, and the environment provided by Wayne was far better at giving it to him than the one Jack offered.

He spent weeks thinking the matter over from every possible angle, trying to find a way for him to keep his son and yet allow Tim to fly as the Robin he so desperately needed.

Jack is not a strategic thinker like Janet had been; in college he played football, but only as a lineman, never as someone who had to make a split-second decision. It took him a while to think things through, but he did it thoroughly and deeply.

In the end, he realized that the best thing to do, the only thing to do, is to let nature take its course, let Tim become the Robin he represents.

It's time for the baby bird to leave the nest.

So now Jack sits, quietly waiting in his apartment, with the gun across his lap and the will carefully signed and sealed and secured in his safe. Wayne will be good for his kid, he knows. Wayne will help Tim succeed, help him grow into the man he should be, the man he's destined to be.

Jack has no desire to get in the way of that.

He reflects back on everything he's done with Tim, the life they've lived together, both with Janet and after her. It's been good, he decides, as good a life as he could have hoped for. Tim, the light of his life, his pride and joy, his only son—Tim will continue to live on, to grow, to thrive, to transform into a man.

He wishes he could see it. But Jack knows he only holds Tim back.

He's always known, from that first day, when he was restraining his four-year-old from leaping down the seats to chase after a mysterious figure in a black cape.

Jack is a man with his feet on the ground, his hands in the dirt.

And Tim—beautiful, intelligent, wise beyond his years—Tim is meant to fly.

So Jack waits, his finger on the trigger, his heart calm despite the knowledge that he is about to die. He hears the breaking of the front door, the footsteps of the villain he hired expressly for this purpose, the rustling as the man hones in on him.

Jack closes his eyes.

And pulls the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> Jack Drake, the unsung hero or the psychopath who trashed Tim's life. Take your pick.


End file.
